From Sea Shells To Paper

Around the year 2015 an artsy friend suggested i make larger sculptures, but since i had already reached the practical limits with sea shells, i turned to a massive stack of LA Times newspapers gathering dust in a four bedroom oceanfront home on a five mile beach–that i happened to be caring for. An encouraging start.

These are some of the sea shell sculptures i had already made

The first four people-sized sculptures i created were all attempts at re-creating the original leaping figure (below) sitting atop this sea shell sculpture.

The Leaping I sculpture was 8.5 feet long and crude–though it did capture leaping. Weighing in at 60+ pounds, that’s a lot of flour, newspaper and time.

Having learned a lesson in what’s totally impractical, i decided Leaping II had to be smaller, it ultimately looked like a juvenile version of the original but even more awkward. In 2019, i bolted Leaping II to a tree next to a busy road south of Ensenada, BC. Its still there thanks to the epoxy resin coating.

Leaping III was the charm. Not just leaping but with an attitude. The quality of the finish was clearly improved too. It took me three years to turn my yard purple with statice. Those hills are five miles distant.

Unable to resist a curvier version, Leaping IV looked more like a shark.

I have since made a couple of smaller leaping sculptures. Leaping V and an (incomplete) Leaping Orca reflecting the BC influence on my work.

Time to move on. . .A five inch tall sea shell sculpture (w/ bird jaw legs, crab shell body and fish bone head) was my next target; called Tiny Dancer.

Two tiny fish bones (a jaw bone and the bone that connects to the jaw bone) became the ever watchful Silver Sentinel sculpture.

One discovery i made while beachcombing the beaches of Baja California was that there are bird-shaped bones inside fish; and fish-like bones inside birds. This Fear sculpture is based on a fish-shaped bone from a pelican breast. i believe the “eye” is where the leg connects to the breast.

I replaced the jaws base on Fear, with a splash. The jaw base was repurposed for Jaws I, with the addition of stalk eyes and a second row of teeth.

The Heron Sculpture was an amalgam of a seagull head and beak (center), atop a long tall body mimicking a vulture drying its wings in the morning sun. The original sea shell sculpture had a fish jaw bone for wings and was perched atop a snail shell.